


Favors

by blackmetaldahlia



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abuse, Animal Sacrifice, Backstory, Caleb-typical Issues, Canon Backstory, Contracts, Fae & Fairies, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Multi, Possible Explanation For Why Caleb Is Uhhhh Like That, Soltryce Kids, Torture, With A Twist, i promise that tag isn't as fucked up as it looks, no editing we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 01:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16903671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmetaldahlia/pseuds/blackmetaldahlia
Summary: “A favor is returned by another favor,Liebling,” his mother says. “And the creatures of the woods will always collect.”Caleb, four years old and bright-eyed, nods as he helps his mother dust a little bit of sugar over the plain cakes she has baked for midsummer. They don’t always have enough, but when they have anything to spare, it goes to thestille Luete. Simple cakes, dishes of cream, little dolls made of straw that dangle like effigies over the fireplace - when they have enough good wood for kindling.“But be careful not to ask too much,” she cautions. “If a favor is large, the fae can be fickle with their power. Gold turns to straw and the like, I’ve told you that story, haven’t I?”“Ja, Mutti,” Caleb says cheerfully. “I can be careful.”





	Favors

**Author's Note:**

> Caleb speaks Sylvan, has a fae familiar, was "saved" by a woman who worships the Archeart, and is Like That (views practically every interaction as a potential transaction). Conclusion: That Boy Has Some Fae Background.

“A favor is returned by another favor, _Liebling_ ,” his mother says. “And the creatures of the woods will always collect.”

Caleb, four years old and bright-eyed, nods as he helps his mother dust a little bit of sugar over the plain cakes she has baked for midsummer. They don’t always have enough, but when they have anything to spare, it goes to the _stille Luete_. Simple cakes, dishes of cream, little dolls made of straw that dangle like effigies over the fireplace - when they have enough good wood for kindling.

“But be careful not to ask too much,” she cautions. “If a favor is large, the fae can be fickle with their power. Gold turns to straw and the like, I’ve told you that story, haven’t I?”

“ _Ja, Mutti_ ,” Caleb says cheerfully. “I can be careful.”

\---

When his is six, he watches a caravan of travelers come through Blumenthal, and he sees a woman juggling lights that are clearly magical. He thinks of all the nights when the sun has gone down early and his family has been left in the dark – they have a small stock of candles, but those are saved for nights when Caleb has nightmares. He wonders if he could learn to make those lights.

The caravan sets up camp not even a mile out of the town border, and that night Caleb sneaks out of his room, carrying Frumpkin on his shoulders. The full moon lights his way down the hill, and he walks just behind the treeline, eyes set on the caravan’s lanterns.

Just outside where the caravan is set up, he stops and sits for over an hour, watching every man and woman, committing their actions to memory. Frumpkin purrs on his shoulders, her paws occasionally kneading at his upper arm. “ _Hush_ ,” he whispers to her, and then turns to stalk a bit deeper into the woods.

He knows the trees of this region not by name, but by the colorful mushrooms that spring up around the base. It doesn’t take long to find one that has fabulous, pumpkin-colored fungi growing in whimsical puffs in a ring around the outside. He hasn’t learned the word for them in Common, but the Zemnian word is _Dunkler_ _Ölbaumtrichterling_.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a simple bracelet he had taken from his mother’s modest jewelry box. It is three braided strands of silver, and he’s never seen her actually wear it. They have no use for fine things when even the simple things evade them. Guilt pools in the bottom of his stomach, but he thinks that this is a risk he must take. He tosses the bracelet into the middle of the ring, careful not to let his hand pass over the mushrooms.

“Hallo,” he says quietly, before taking a long moment to feel like an idiot. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

\---

Caleb learns to make lights from his pilfered spellbook, which looked as though it had changed hands dozens of times before falling into his. He had slipped under the tarp of the wagon that the woman had been riding in, found it nearly instantly, and slipped back out without being seen. The wind was at his back as he raced back up the hill to his home, and he knew as he slipped into bed and hid the book under his pillow that the bracelet would be gone if he went to look for it in the morning.

It's the first spell in the book, the only one written in a language he can understand, though it's written upside down and backwards, in elaborate spirals around the page. As the book goes on, the codes become more complicated, but he thinks  _I'll burn that bridge when I get to it_ and gets to work.

It takes him months of practicing the exact motions of his hands, stumbling through the arcane words, and then even more sneaking and subterfuge to obtain a small vial of phosphorous from the apothecary (it was easy enough to catch a glowworm), but on a clear Autumn day four orbs shoot out from his small, steady hands, and he thinks he can hear someone giggling in his ear.

That night, he leaves a dish of cream on his windowsill. In the morning, it’s empty.

\---

His parents are so proud, _so proud, Liebling_ , and do everything they can to make it easier for him to learn. They never ask where he got the spellbook, and he doesn’t know if he would truthfully answer if they did ask, they just ask what they can do to help him learn.

Vati can’t read, it was Mutti who taught him his letters. But even she can’t teach him all the codes and glyphs that make up the simple cantrips and spells in his books. He’s a brilliant child, and after a few weeks he’s deciphered the more simple codes, but there are symbols and letters that he doesn’t _know_ , and he can’t learn a language wholesale just from attempting to read it.

So one night, after weeks of frustration, he takes the book and Frumpkin out to the woods under the soothing light of two full moons. He sits under the oldest tree he can find, and he thinks about the words that he can’t understand.

After several hours of quiet meditation, he leans back against the ancient wood. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

\---

On nights when both moons are full, he takes his book and he takes his cat and he sings for the trees in a language he’s only just started to understand. It sounds like the wind, and bird whistles, and the whisper of leaves falling on the earth, and it’s clumsy in his mouth but it’s getting smoother with every song.

 _You have a beautiful voice_ , something whispers from a dark place between two trees.

“ _Danke_ ,” Caleb replies. “I’m glad you accepted my offer.”

 _Your offers have been fair_ , a different voice says softly. _And your family has been kind to us_.

He smiles as he sits at the base of the old tree – his father had told him it was called _Eiche_ – and whistles like a songbird. The wind in the trees answers back.

\---

When Caleb is twelve, he has nearly a dozen odd favors under his belt. Little things to keep his family alive when harvests run thin (in return, he had defaced the wards that one of the new families had placed over their front door), learning stronger magic (convincing Mutti to put a bit of coffee in the cakes she made at midsummer), and sometimes for pranks against his friends (the fae never seemed to ask much in return for this, just a bowl of cream or a wreathe of flowers).

He still sings on the nights when both moons are full, the Sylvan flowing beautifully through his human lips. Sometimes the local animals come and join in, crickets chirping in time and wolves howling at the high points.

And when he tells Eodwulf that he’ll teach him how to do harder maths if Eodwulf will teach him how to weave bracelets, Eodwulf frowns before nodding slowly. “That seems fair.”

Eodwulf also has a knack for magic, though his stems from his blood. He doesn’t have to read runes over and over again to try and commit them to memory, it comes as naturally as breathing to him. Caleb tries not to be jealous, but it’s nearly impossible when it takes him months at a time to learn a new spell, and he has to barter and beg to get components.

Caleb trades woven bracelets for coppers, and trades coppers for herbs and trinkets that he can use to cast spells. Eodwulf learns maths. It’s a fair trade.

\---

Caleb’s first open favor is to Astrid. He needs sand – _fine_ sand, not the coarse silt that lies at the base of the surrounding hills. Astrid has family on the Menagerie Coast, and if she can get him a small vial of fine sand, he’ll do something for her in return.

“I’ll collect, Widogast,” she promises him as she writes a letter to her great-aunt.

Six weeks later, she holds the small glass tube with fine sand over his head, out of reach. She’s hit her growth spurt first, and towers over both him _and_ Eodwulf. Eodwulf is not taking it well. “Kiss me, and it’s yours,” she says with a grin. “I told you I’d collect.”

Caleb blushes instantly. Astrid is the most handsome woman he's ever seen. He’s thirteen, he’s never kissed _anyone_ , and his voice shakes as he says “A first kiss is a pretty high price, Astrid.”

Her eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline. “You _first_ kiss, _M_ _äuschen_?”

He looks at the ground and kicks the dirt, certain that his bright red cheeks and ears are answer enough. She sighs, and hands him the vial. “Tell me what you need it for, then. Keep that bargaining chip for later.”

“I, uh, I’m having trouble falling asleep,” he mumbles. “There’s a spell.”

She nods. “I’ve heard of it from the Lawbearer,” she says. “I can’t learn it, I’ve tried.” She cocks her head to the side. “Good luck, _M_ _äuschen_.”

He smiles at her, and can’t help but think that he’s gotten the better deal.

\---

He winds up spending his first kiss on Eodwulf, a messy night in his bedroom when he’s fourteen and they’re both drunk on cider that Eodwulf has been making in his closet.

“You’re skin and bones, _Schatz_ ,” he says, tapping one of Caleb’s collarbones as he pulls away. “Thought your fairies were keeping you fed.”

“I grew six inches in a summer, _Moppelchen_ ,” Caleb whispers back, with a breathy laugh. “A nightly _feast_ wouldn’t put meat on my bones.”

Eodwulf is now the shortest of the three of them, and he’s still not taking it well.

“You _need_ meat on your bones, dumbass,” Eodwulf mutters. “It’s gonna be a cold winter. How are you gonna impress the Soltryce folks if you die on a cold night?”

Caleb laughs out loud at this, and turns to straddle Eodwulf’s lap. Eodwulf lets out a little yelp at this, and Caleb grins at the flush climbing up his friend’s neck. Cider and magic sing in his veins, and he thinks he can hear the laughter of the fae under the whistling of the wind through the trees.

“Shall we exchange a favor for a favor then, _Moppelchen_?” he says as he leans in, watching Eodwulf’s eyes dilate. “My skinny ass will live through the winter,” he whispers, drawing a long, bony hand across Eodwulf’s jaw, just barely dragging his thumb along his swollen red lower hip, “if you keep me warm at night.”

Eodwulf chuckles breathelessly at that, and puts his hands on Caleb’s hips. “Shall we seal the deal with another kiss?”

Caleb leans down and meets Eodwulf’s lips, his own stretched into a smile.

\---

It’s the Spring Equinox when the men and women of the Soltryce Academy examine the dozen or so children of Blumenthal who have acquired some form of magical talent. Caleb is among the youngest, but he can tell from the eyes of his examiners that he has made an impression.

He’s reverse-engineered every spell in his pilfered spellbook, and though they aren’t especially powerful, he knows his gestures are flawless, his enunciation is clear, and when he launches a firebolt at a target nearly fifty yards away the heat burns in his palms like it’s made to be there. When he closes his presentation by turning into a perfect replica of the examiner and bowing grandly, he gets _applause_.

“You’re going to be accepted, _Schatz_ ,” Eodwulf says, punching him cheerfully on the shoulder. He’s caught up in height a bit, but Caleb’s shot up another four inches and now even has Astrid beaten for height. “I’m gonna miss you.”

“We’re _all_ going to miss you,” Astrid adds. The magic of the Lawbearer shines through her, and he knows that her magic rises above the other children of the temple, but she’s also convinced that it pales next to his.

 _And she’s right_ , the fae whisper through the wind. _We have made you strong for us_.

“Maybe they’ll take more than one,” Caleb says meekly.

Eodwulf huffs a laugh. His shoulders are broad, and they shake with it. “When have they _ever_ done that? Most years they don’t even take _one_. We’ll see you on holidays, maybe.”

Caleb frowns, and tries to imagine leaving Blumenthal behind, not taking his friends with him, and it feels like his lungs are filled with frigid winter air. Astrid is handsome and Eodwulf is beautiful and he loves them both, so much.

“Your magic is _strong_ ,” he says, and he’s well aware that it’s dangerously close to a whine. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t take you.”

“Apart from being poor as dirt and shittily bred?” Astrid says with an eyeroll. “Our type is a risky investment, _M_ _äuschen_. You know this.”

He sniffs, and feels something awful settling in his stomach. “Either we all go, or none of us go,” he says decisively. “Deal?”

“ _Nein_!” Astrid hisses. “Are you an idiot? You don’t get to throw away an opportunity like this for us.”

Eodwulf puts a finger to his lips when he tries to argue. “We aren’t like your fairies, Cay,” he says. “We don’t have to take every deal that benefits us.”

He nods and lets his shoulders drop.

That night, he goes into the woods with his spellbook and his cat, who spends most of her time asleep. She’s blind and deaf and he can tell that walking hurts her. She’s lived, improbably, nearly fourteen years. She purrs weakly in his arms, and Caleb can feel how slowly her heart beats against his cold fingers.

Her life has been good.

He sets her at the base of the _Eiche_ where he’d bargained his voice for a language, and whispers, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

\---

He can’t always get to the gardens on full moons at Soltryce. They aren’t meant to leave their dorms, and while what he does isn’t exactly fae _worship_ , it runs close enough that he doesn’t want to risk it coming to the attention of any of the professors.

On nights when it’s too risky to sneak out, he opens the window and leans out, letting his voice join the wind.

Eodwulf and Astrid stand guard when he does this, similarly nervous about how heathen-adjacent the activity looks. But they knew better than to try and talk him out of it.

Their families had been ecstatic when, against all odds, all three of them had been taken in as _krachlederner Typ_. But Astrid and Eodwulf had given him nervous looks throughout the celebrations, even as they drank and sang and danced.

“What did you give them, _M_ _äuschen_?” Astrid asks in a hushed voice as her priest loudly waxes lyrical about Astrid’s devotion to the Lawbearer. “What did you decide we were _worth_ to you?”

Caleb meets her eyes after a long moment and sets his jaw. “Companionship for companionship, _Engel_ ,” he says, levelly. Some color leaves her face, and she quickly finishes her wine, before her shoulders relax and she sighs.

“ _Danke_ ,” she finally says. “I am…very grateful. Tell them that.”

“I will.”

He sings about everything he’s learned at the Academy, the history and power and magic that he reads of every day. He’s even found a few books of Sylvan songs – mostly about the creatures of the forest and the games they play with each other – and when he sings these songs he always finds some sort of bauble or treasure in his shoe the next day.

\---

Magic burns in his veins as he learns to shape fireballs around his friends and classmates. He learns to throw a rope into the air and into another dimension. To unlock doors with a word. He stays up late at night, scrawling one spell after another into his book, over and over again until it’s burnt into his memory.

He has a bad habit of trying spells before he’s ready for them, leaving his body weak and his mind scattered for days afterwards, but he hears his teachers whispering about his tenacity and ambition and thinks, _the trade was worth it_. And when he learns the spells weeks before his classmates, he thinks, _the trade was worth it_.

Astrid and Eodwulf work hard to keep up with him, and while he still outpaces them, they outpace the rest of their class. He misses the weight of Frumpkin on his shoulders while he reads, on his back while he sleeps, in his lap while he sits and thinks, but he still thinks _the trade was worth it_.

And when Arch Mage Trent Ikithon takes them in, he thinks _the trade was worth it_.

\---

They learn to maintain concentration with arrows in their chest, to cast spells with broken hands, to whisper arcane words around harsh gags.

“I hear you like bargaining, Mister Widogast,” Master Ikithon says conversationally one day, and Caleb almost feels his concentration give. He’s containing a water elemental in a Resilient Sphere while standing in a Cloud of Daggers that Master Ikithon had conjured. Blood is pooling at his feet, but the sphere holds. “Shall we make a deal? What is it, a favor for a favor?”

“What are you offering me?” Caleb asks in monotone as he feels a dagger slide against his ribs. He was still lanky, had never quite filled out after his growth spurt.

“I end this exercise and let Astrid get some healing practice.”

Another dagger, this one against his shoulderblade. The sphere flickers, but holds.

“And what shall I do in return?”

“ _Stop singing to your stille Luete friends,_ ” Master Ikithon hisses in Sylvan, and Caleb’s sphere disappears as his heart climbs into his throat. “Ah. How disappointing. Get out of my sight.”

\---

Caleb stops singing on the full moons, and every time he sees them hanging in the sky, his blood runs cold. He doesn’t hear laughter on the wind anymore, and he sometimes finds sharp burrs in his shoes when he’d once found gold coins.

He’s in pain nearly constantly, but his magic is growing faster than he’d ever imagined it could. Every time his skin splits, it’s as though the magic of the world enters his body and fills him fit to bursting. And his skin splits often, under the whip or against the edge of a blade or once, memorably, under the unbearable heat of a pyre.

They need to be strong for the Empire, and these exercises make them strong. They learn of the horrors growing in Xhorhas, where there’s no Empire to keep things in order. Astrid supplements with the glory of the Lawbearer, and how chaos is the enemy.

He thinks of the chaotic, fickle magic of the fae, and feels shame for how much he relied on them as a naïve little child. He doesn’t think _the trade was worth it_ – he thinks _the trade was treason_.

Eodwulf and Astrid share his bed, and they work together, creating deadly combinations that will serve them well on a battlefield in service of the Empire. They are sixteen and invincible, they’ve pushed themselves to the limit and keep finding that the breaking point just doesn’t exist.

The first time Master Ikithon orders them to execute a heretic, Caleb doesn’t hesitate before putting his hand to a pale man’s mouth and sending a Fireball into his stomach. He effortlessly weaves the explosion around himself, his fellow students, and his Master.

“Very creative,” Master Ikithon says, coldly. “But too merciful. Next time, make them suffer first.”

They pivot from learning magic to learning what, exactly, suffering is.

\---

“I’ll make you a deal,” Caleb says to a woman who is now missing all of the fingers on her left hand. He had gone joint by joint, first flaying the finger and then forcing the dagger between the bones until the joint disconnected with a wet _pop_. “You tell me where the rest of your little club meets, and I let you keep your right hand.”

She sobs around her gag and shakes her head.

“You think this is not a fair deal, _ja_?” Caleb asks with an exasperated sigh, before looking down at her maimed hand. He had hit a major artery while taking out the thumb, and it’s bleeding rapidly.

“Ah, the deal you want is that you sacrifice your meager little life by bleeding out, and your heathen friends get to keep worshiping false gods in peace?”

Even while sobbing, her eyes are defiant as she nods. Caleb sighs and wipes the dagger on her dress. He then takes her hand in his, looks her in the eye, and casts Burning Hands. Her muffled screams mingle with the scent of cooking flesh that fills the room. When he pulls his hand away, the stump is barely recognizable as a former limb, but the bleeding has stopped.

“That is not a fair deal to _me_ , _Liebling_.”

\---

“You owe me a favor, Widogast,” Astrid says one day, as she polishes her holy symbol while Caleb scribes spells. They’ve been given a rare day off after Caleb had managed to break a prisoner that even Master Ikithon had not been able to – a mouthy elf with the sort of iron will that made charm spells sterile and physical torture fruitless.

Caleb had offered the elf a favor in return for cooperation. “I take favors seriously,” he had explained. “It is how I grew up, you see. You know my position within the Empire, you know the power that I wield, and it will be yours to command if you take my offer. Nothing is off-limits, I promise on the crown of King Bertrand Dwendal himself.”

He had learned these tricks from the fae, to layer his voice with the promise of power that accepting his offer would give. It wasn’t necessarily _magic_ , and there was precious little written on human use of fae tricks, but he could tell that it still held power when the elf’s eyes narrowed in careful consideration. Even though he had spurned the fae, he could still use what he'd learned from them.

“Your _exact_ terms?” he said in Nicodranas-accented Common.

“You answer my questions, honestly. A warning, though - I will be able to tell if you are lying, and will rescind my offer. And for  _you_ , if you escape – and I know that you believe you can escape, I will do nothing to undermine that belief – you may ask one thing of me. Again, no limits. I will throw myself from the window if you command, or put a blade to my Master’s throat – whatever you wish, I will act on it. You must, simply, escape.”

He had accepted, and now they had a lead on a very ambitious group of assassins gunning for King Dwendal. Caleb had thanked the elf, and then escorted him to Master Ikithon’s chambers to be executed.

Not once while bargaining had either of them discussed the contingencies of execution. Rookie mistake.

“What favor?” Caleb asks.

“You know as well as I do that you owe me for that sand all those years ago.”

Caleb remembers. Of course he does. “What do you want?”

“A kiss, _arschloch_. Not your first kiss this time, just _a_ kiss.”

Without hesitating, Caleb leans in and kisses her on the lips, lingering just long enough for her to sigh and lean into him. “Why now?” he asks.

“We wouldn’t be here without you,” Astrid says, absently. “We wouldn’t have the chance to serve the Empire like this, we wouldn’t be _strong_ – we’d just be dumb, starving kids in a no-name village, probably taking shitty jobs to make a two coppers a day. I loved you even before you got us here, and I still love you. Even if you didn’t want your first kiss to be with me.”

Caleb flushes. “I, uh. You are a handsome woman. But, ah, Eodwulf.”

“I know. I love him, too.”

With a small, breathy laugh, Caleb leans up and kisses her again. “Perhaps we can make a deal?”

\---

It’s easy enough to go from sharing a bed to _sharing a bed_. They tell each other everything, have a complex network of favors owed to each other that Caleb can recite as though it’s a cantrip. Their relationship is built around favors to each other, to their loved ones, to their families –

And then it turns out that their families are traitors. Conspirators. Working to overthrow the order of the Empire, to sow seeds of chaos, to undermine everything they’ve worked for.

“After everything the Empire has done for you,” Master Ikithon says in his deep voice, “the time has come to return the favor.” He looks at Caleb as he says it.

\---

Astrid and Caleb ensure that nobody sees them as Eodwulf slits his parents’ throats.

Eodwulf and Caleb play happy dinner guests as Astrid poisons her parents.

Astrid and Eodwulf help Caleb maneuver a cart so that it blocks the one exit from his family’s home.

A network of favors to each other, they all balance out. They owe the Empire a favor, and the Empire has called it in – the traitors are to die.

Caleb snaps his fingers, whispering words that he learned by the grace of the _stille Luete_ , and it all goes up in flames.

This is their duty.

This is the favor that is owed to the Empire, because the Empire gives them the power they had madly sought as children. The Empire has done more for them than their parents ever had.

And then the screaming starts.

 _All the power in the world is not worth my parents’ lives_ , Caleb thinks. And then he screams, and he can’t get the cart out of the way, and there are hands on him, pulling him away, and he thinks of the ancient _Eiche_ in the woods behind this house – this house that he has destroyed, that he has burnt down with magic poisoned by an Empire that asked too high a price, that he had spurned the fair dealings of the fae for – and he thinks _I will give you anything if it will stop this_.

Out loud, as his thoughts slow to a crawl, he whispers “I have a favor to ask of you.”

\---

The cost is ten years and his sanity.

\---

The clouds clear and the woman with the Archeart's symbol tattooed on her forehead begins screaming. Caleb is lucid enough to _think_ for the first time in years, years that he's bargained away for a second chance after spurning the beings who had given him magic in the first place. And he thinks - 

 _It was a fair trade_.

**Author's Note:**

> I subscribe to the theory that Caleb had gotten to a higher level and then his time at the asylum fucked him up Real Bad. Also that he was an Evocation mage while at Soltryce. I couldn't remember if he said that Astrid and Eodwulf were also wizards, so I said fuck it and made Astrid a Cleric and Eodwulf a Sorcerer, because I like to party.
> 
> ALSO I have no idea how the fae _really_ work in 5E D&D, so I smashed that folklore button like a motherfucker.


End file.
